Sunday newsagency management tip: compete against yourself
On the first day of every month I look at the Monthly Sales Comparison Report for my business, comparing year on year performance by department, category and supplier. Looking at revenue as well as unit sales where appropriate. Every good newsagency software package, every good retail business software package, will have a report like the Monthly Sales Comparison Report to enable easy year on year comparison.
Your most important benchmark is how you have done for the most recent period compared to the same period a year ago.
Click on the image to see a larger version. The data in the example is not as important as the layout. I have removed the business name to avoid identification.
On this report you have the most recent period on the left, the older period in the middle and the variances on the right. In seconds you can see how you are doing. This is the report I use most of the time in my businesses. I look at the back page first where I compare traffic, basket value, basket depts and overall sales growth. Next I look at key departments and compare revenue and unit sales performance. For example, with magazines I compare performance at the MPA magazine category level using unit sales as the measure. With stationery, I look at revenue.
I also look at the percentage of revenue by department because balancing the business is important to me. I don’t want too much revenue to come from one department. I manage balancing revenue by growing others rather than shrinking one that is too big.
I urge newsagents to find this Monthly Sales Comparison Report or similar in their software and to use it regularly to track performance. Do this, live by the results reported – and your business will improve.
Footnote: the Monthly Sales Comparison Report is a key report I use when undertaning newsagency business performance analysis. It’s also the report I would look at for any newsagency I was considering purchasing.
